Standard Rails development made me happy like no other programming paradigm in my career. Simple front-end development with standard Rails and a sprinkling of jQuery was 'OK' Then, in 2014, I had to build a front-end that dynamically updated like a desktop app. I knew there had to be something better, and I went down the rabbit hole of integrating React with Rails using Webpack. Come find out how my obsessive pursuit of “developer happiness” for the Rails front-end eventually drove me to start the React on Rails gem, the most popular integration of Rails with React using Webpack.